Between Darkness and Light
by Twiist
Summary: AU, PostDH.Possible spoilers. After the Battle of Hogwarts reaches its end, Voldemort has risen victoriously, Potter is dead, and the face of the wizarding, and muggle, world as we know it has undoubtedly changed forever. DMPP. Mainly Draco's POV.
1. The White Room

* * *

**Title: **Between Darkness and Light. 

**Disclaimer: **First and foremost, I do not own any of the characters, locations, objects etc. in the 'Potterverse', I'm simply making use of them. They are all J.K Rowling's creations; hers entirely, and I am not about to claim otherwise. I also do not claim any ownership of any lyrics that may crop up at the beginning of each chapter and I will give due credit to those I use where appropriate.  
Just no one try and sue me, k? The only thing I lay claim to is some of the ideas in this fic and an OC or two.

**Summary: **A new world order from Draco Malfoy's POV (subject to change along the way lol). AU, Post-DH. Possibility of spoilers cropping up.  
After the Battle of Hogwarts reaches it's climactic end, Lord Voldemort has finally risen victoriously, Harry Potter is dead, and the face of the wizarding -- and indeed muggle -- world as we know it, has undoubtedly changed forever.

**Warnings: **Violence. Substance Abuse. Bad language. Potential DH Spoilers. Possible sexual scenes.

**A/N: **AU fic, but one that follows canon pretty much up until the last few chapters of DH, albeit with a few possible changes here and there in plot throughout the series of books. Anything that deviates from canon when it comes to back story, will be noted in due course and if a difference is not mentioned in the story, then it's safe to assume it sticks to canon. Also, it's probably worth noting that my basis for characters veers strongly towards the RP group I am a part of (Myspace - HPRPU - !pimp pimp pimp!), so forgive any discrepancies with the characters you think you know and love, as they may well stray from that lol. Also, I'm rating this M as of the start, simply because as it's going to lean that way from pretty early on even though the first chapter is tame. So don't moan that it's wrongly labelled, I HATE when people do that! - This story is NOT a oneshot, therefore the rating is for the story itself; to be applied to its completed form. All will make sense in due course, so don't bitch about it yet.

Oh, and R&R S'il Vous Plaît. Even if you hate it, I'm open to know why you do and what I can do to improve things.

K, I'm very nearly done with the rant now, I promise, we're drawing close to the _'on with the show!' _moment... Save for one last thing..

* * *

This attempt is dedicated to the ever present and Blaise shaped ray of sunshine; my rock.

She-who-must-not-be-sane to suffer my ranting so willingly,   
The gal who got me through the DH death scenes,   
Who giggled at every Malfoy Manor mention with me,   
And finally, she-who-wrote 'We've Got Peacocks!!!' on my wall.

This one's for you, Paula (OrbThesela).

* * *

**Between Darkness and Light.**

* * *

**Chapter One:**

**The White Room**

**------------------- -------------------  
**  
"_We walk the narrow path, beneath these smoking skies,  
Sometimes you barely tell the difference, between darkness and light.  
Do we have faith?, in what we believe?  
The truest test, is when we cannot, when we cannot see."_

It Can't Rain all the Time - Jane Siberry.

**------------------- -------------------**

There had been no sinister flash of green nor the crippling pain of a spells impact, just the sudden dead weight of his body slumping to the floor of it's own volition, his eyes open and staring blindly ahead as a great wash of blackness covered over him, as if a heavy blanket had been thrown over the battle; thrown over the world. All that remained now was a darkness so deep that the frozen figure felt hard pressed to stare into it any longer; an infinite dusk to which his eyes soon shut.

There was no sting to his descent and no fire and brimstone awaiting him after he had fallen, no stab of pitchforks or snarling demonic visages to welcome him to what he was sure could very well be a long term vacation in hell. In point of fact, when he had finally dared to open his eyes, there was nothing. Simply nothing. A vast white chasm that stretched out around him for miles and miles in all directions - no hint of a landscape or single breath of wind, just a still, blanched oblivion. It was as if all life bar his had simply ceased to exist. _'__Perhaps it__'__s merely the antechamber to the afterlife then__' _he thought with the first of many bitter smirks.

His body, despite a slight air of uncertainty regarding it's own stability, slowly twitched into being, every nerve abruptly springing into life amidst its insensible surroundings. There was still no pain though, merely the few telling signs that there _should _be pain present; a few cuts and scrapes, as well as a rather long and noticeably deep gash along the side of one arm, which throbbed quietly beneath his torn sleeve as it bled violent drips of colour onto the stark white floor.

Rather stunned by the lack of the pain that had previously coursed through his veins, he shrugged agreeably to himself at the change before raking his fingers along the seamless floor, marvelling in its slight coldness given that he had felt nothing thus far. Having become a little more accustomed to being at such a sensation, his bloodied arms soon made easy work of pushing him up off of the ground and into a seated position, propping himself up on one arm as he stared around his desolate surroundings, with nothing but the occasional sound of his blood dripping onto the floor for companionship. Such silence fast becoming beyond frustrating, he called out into the still air - willing a reply to follow, but it didn't.  
Instead, his voice seemed to be sucked up into the ether just as soon as it had left his mouth, leaving the same dense silence in its stead and a panicked frown on the boy's face.

Declining the urge to submit to the fear that was now boiling beneath the surface, he slowly pushed up from the ground once more and rose to his feet, such an action causing the room to swell around him as though someone had just fed him a large dose of a rather potent shrinking potion. Looking around the widened space before him, he had never felt smaller or more insignificant in all of his 18 years; for one who had always seen himself as a big splash in the pond of life, it was rather hard to be left hopelessly flapping against the still surface and not have a single ripple to show for his efforts.

His face paled, his frown growing larger by the second; Whatever could be described as life here, seemed long past futile.  
It was hollow and raw and severe.  
Perhaps this was hell after all.

--

* * *

--

What felt like hours after initially fumbling around in his tangled robes and trying his wand, he had sighed dejectedly to himself and tossed the wooden object angrily across the brightly lit space. His spell-work had worked, in a sense, but he seemed to only be capable of magic that was the equivalent of parlour tricks for muggles, to various pointless ends, all of which were now strewn across the floor in front of him. Wildly coloured blooms of flowers, gleaming carved goblets, colourful wisps of smoke and explosions of fire, he could manage. But when it came to locator spells, apparition, summoning charms, or any attempt to glean a slight indication as to where exactly he was, his wand merely sparked lifelessly and seemed to almost wilt under the pressure of trying for such a pleasant end. Even his most brutal selection of hexes had merely jetted into the distance until their vivid colour had become so far off that it faded completely into the ever-white horizon.

He sunk to his knees, eyeing the wand across from him with a colossal air of contempt for a moment before slumping down more so onto the floor, his entire body shaking as he put a hand to his head and let out a couple of dry bewildered sobs. The questions twirled round in his brain like an out of control spinning top, clashing noisily against the walls of his mind before spinning mercilessly in the opposite direction. _'__Is this a dream? Some sort of coma? A spell to mess with my mind? .. Or..__'_ he gulped _'__Am I.. dead? ..__'_ biting back another sob at the thought, he frowned suddenly, looking upwards in confusion as a crackling sound resounded somewhere within the radiance of the room.

"_Master Malfoy?…" _

The voice faded for a brief moment before sounding again in a delicate whisper.

"_Draco?"_

His head turned frantically in all directions at the sound splitting the silence a second time, trying to determine its source and fast getting lost in the faint echo of it as it bounced around the nothingness in a way that seemed rather baffling given the place's effects on his own voice. He stood up again, turning around on the spot and staring up into the sparse vacuum that was his holding cell, screaming out in vain to the disembodied voice; his own words disappearing inertly into the air with every attempt, crumbling as though an ancient ruin under the footfalls of a particularly heavy set man. The voice sounded again, this time accompanied with a sigh and a clear edge of fear to its tone.

"_I thought he stirred, madam, but apparently I-- I was mistaken. My most humble apologies, madam. Forgive me."_

There was the unmistakable fizzling crack of a curse being fired, followed by a loud yelp and scurrying footsteps as whoever the mysterious handmaiden was, fled. The sound of her footsteps was soon cancelled out, however, by the sound of a new voice booming through the brilliance of the room.

"_Just leave me to it! Why I allow myself to suffer your incompetence day after day is quite beyond me! Filthy muggle scum.."_

Draco's heart leapt slightly at the sound of his mother's voice, ringing as clearly in the air as though she was stood right beside him. His eyes widened; if he could hear her, then perhaps she could hear him in return? Such thinking in mind, his mouth opened and his voice pleadingly, furiously screamed out into the abyss, relentlessly calling out to Narcissa Malfoy long after his throat was raw and his words were mere whispering echoes of their predecessors.

And then there was silence. Again.

--

* * *

------

"_D-- Do you think he's.. going t--to.. live.."_

_------------------------_

"_That damn house elf was more use than you could ever  
dream to be, you disgusting wretch!"_

_------------------------------__-----  
_

"_Don't look at me like that.. I'm only trying to help!"_

_------------------------------__--------------------  
_

"_Just bring me a bottle of Firewhiskey,  
I'm sure I'll be far more inclined to read if I'm on the way to being drunk.."_

-----------------------------------------------------------------

The days -- or what Draco imagined to be days; for all he knew, it could have been either mere minutes or several full years since he had fallen to the ground and the world had been lost beneath him -- continued like this; random pockets of sound violently erupting in the space for moments at a time before they vanished as swiftly as they had come. Draco had felt no stab of hunger in this time, no ache to his bones, no sensation of the air or the brilliance of sleep for his entire duration in what he had come to dub simply as 'the white room'. It was as though the world in which he had once lived, only existed in these tiny moments of noise, and that was enough to keep him going. Barely so, but enough.

He waited for such moments in near silence more often than not; having rescued his wand not long after tossing it aside and holding it as close to his chest as if it were a newborn heir, that was, of course, in between the moments that he had chosen to implement every spell he could fathom to try and escape the clutches of this barren world. Aside from that, he had kept himself vaguely amused with numerous enchantments; conjuring various seemingly useless objects to pass the time with and seeing what he could do to occupy himself with such things as a clean pressed shirt, a chocolate frog that he had repeatedly charmed to the point of it melting into a less-than-froglike shape, several rather ornate vases as well as a deck of exploding snap cards that for some reason didn't detonate; anything to keep himself sane. He had to keep his spirits up, this he knew. He wasn't quite sure _how_ he knew, but the innate pang of certainty towards such a fact that grew inside his chest each time he wanted to give up, was enough to keep him from caving in to the misery of such a bleak seeming situation.

But, all in all, it was the sporadic voices that actually kept him sane; even his most amused hours always seemed to be spent purely sat in wait for his next glimpse into what was happening back in the real world. He had sadly heard no news of the war as of yet; of who had won, lost or perished in the struggle. The only insight he had, was to who was at his proverbial bedside; a thought he had rooted so harshly in reality given the voices of a few choice family and friends, that he was scared to question it every time his mind inquired. Even in his moments of deepest despair, he forced himself to stick to such a conclusion due to the dismal alternative that it was just his imagination running wild, and only ever would be.

He had to believe there was some truth to an existence outside of this place; he couldn't possibly exist only in his mind, or the remnants of such.  
It _had_ to be real,it just had to be.

--

* * *

--

The more the time slowly passed him by, the more maddened he began to feel. He had taken to talking to himself without realising it somewhere along the way; the sort of insane mutters that you'd expect from a wasted homeless man on a park bench, half dressed and too fucked up on Crack to remember his own name. He had drawn out long one sided conversations as to the owners of the voices that randomly echoed from the endless space around him, talking _at_ them rather than _to_ them when they boomed forth from above and interrupted his isolated ranting. He cursed the names of everyone who had ever wronged, annoyed or crossed him; Potter, Granger, Dumbledore, Longbottom, Loony Lovegood and the entire Weasley clan, being among the widespread few who had been verbally slammed into the ground again and again in increasingly bitter tones, his voice sharp enough to cut through bone at points as he supplemented the urge to just scream into the void with a few more harsh words aimed toward old enemies. He stared on in near astonishment at the amount of hate in himself sometimes, quietly revelling in a loathing which he had never had the opportunity to effusively explore; it seemed now to be a feeling that was as tangible flesh, and one that only became more fully formed the deeper he dug his fingertips into its skin, tearing out leisurely chunks at his will.

He tried several times to envisage other things, happier things, things that had once existed before this bitter conclusion; agreeable times gone by, faces he had known and would currently kill for the company of, the look that accompanied the sound of laughter whether it was rooted in scorn or elation, the superlatively terrifying expression on his father's face when he had been wronged. But try as he might, nothing came.  
His mind was a blank canvas that no paint could seem to stain, leaving him with a monotonously toned recollection of events in the place of what had once been memories.

Then, suddenly, amidst the tangles of corroded thoughts and screaming accounts of 'what-could-have-been', on a day that Draco could not have named if he had tried his utmost; an entirely new voice sprung forth from the depths of the brightness, it's three simple words sounding more delighted and swollen with pride than he could remember having heard anyone speak since his confinement.  
It was a sound that brought a grin to his lips which felt so foreign that it almost hurt.

_"I've got it..."_

--_  
_

* * *

___**Added A/N: **The next chapter wont be too long a wait (hopefully), so if anyone's a little confused, fear not, all will be explained in the next few days... probably... cue a slightly miffed eyebrow raise.. lol. _

___Whilst I'm actively mid rant once more, I must add, again; Please R&R if you can! All comments are welcome ;)  
I'm quite psyched about writing this story and hopefully shall get more than just a start out of it this time around, so it'd be fabulous to know that someone was actually reading and perhaps even enjoying it :p lol.  
Any opinions are welcome, but be careful if you just wanna flame me, I can be rather apt at doing so in return if the need arises ;)  
_


	2. Monochrome

**Chapter Two:  
Monochrome  
**

**------------------- -------------------**

_"She calls me from the cold  
Just when I was low, feeling short of stable  
And all that she intends  
And all she keeps inside, isn't on the label"_

Shimmer - Fuel.

**------------------- -------------------**

* * *

---

Draco had stared around the whitened space for what felt like hours, maybe even days, after the triumphant female voice had punctured his bleak surroundings; staring hopefully as though expecting a figure to rush forward from the ashen backdrop at any moment.  
But no one came, nothing had changed, he was still stuck there, alone in the same vast whiteness that had encompassed him long before such a sound had raised his hopes for escape.

The days that followed the voice had continued to bleed into one long and soundless sequence, and the more time passed, the more restless Draco had become with the matter of silence. His nails were bitten right down to the quick, ten bloodied half crescents barely protruding from the tip of each finger on his weathered hands. His hair, he had noticed, seemed to have actually grown a fair bit as well during his internment, and had easily closed the previous gap between his chin and shoulders, resting there in messy blonde tangles. He had searched the place with inherent poise, pacing toward every viewable space he could venture to without his legs tiring of such a mission, walking for hours at a time with no change to his surroundings whatsoever aside from the quiet measured thud of his feet as they hit the stone beneath. Even with such aimless wandering, the wait was excruciating, every minute seeming to last an eternity as he stared aimlessly around himself, hoping that help would come. Hoping that the voice had been right in her findings, whatever they had been.

The only change, had occurred when the light had started to gradually dim. He had not noticed it at first, and only had discerned such a detail from the fact that the faint scar he had on the back of one hand, had become slowly less and less visible; not through such a marking fading at all, but due to the lack of light instead. He had frowned at such a discovery with a sudden confusion that seemed to tear holes in his previous composure; he knew not whether it was his own doing, his own giving up on such a place or perhaps his defeat at the hands of it. Or whether it was some outside interference in relation to the ecstatic words he had heard some time before. But it was disconcerting to say the least, whatever it was, it meant that his time there was almost over, one way or another. This he did know.

He had spent the rest of this time pacing, convinced that the act of keeping himself occupied would somehow give him a little more time, or at least help the time he had left to pass without such degrading consequence as him falling to his knees and sobbing, yet again. With no idea as to how long he had been walking in the same straight line that seemed to stretch on without end, his feet suddenly made the decision to stop for him, his legs weighting him to the spot as if they were made of lead and rendering him quite unable to move any further. Just as he had began to frown at such, there came another new sensation; his throat was suddenly flooded with feeling, a uncomfortable smouldering, burning unbearably as though someone had just emptied a gallon of Firewhiskey down his neck and then set it alight. His hands flew to his throat, trying to stop himself from choking on the invisible substance and soon falling to his knees under the weight of such strangled attempts, scowling through the pain at having submitted to such an action. He was dizzy, completely disoriented as the world span around him within shattered fragments of light. His eyes were begging him to let them close, but he refused, he had to hold on a little longer. He could not cave now; he'd not suffered this long to submit at the last moment.

The world swirled again, tugging Draco further towards the floor and provoking a loud cry to burst from his previously closed mouth as his head made a loud thud against the cold floor. He remembered touching it upon first entering the white room, the sudden delight in feeling it beneath his fingertips; the elation of feeling _anything_ at all. With such a thought in mind, it was as if the world had suddenly come more into focus, his memories reforming painfully in his mind, scratching and clawing their way out of the darkened box they had been forced into and prompting a pained muted scream inside his head. The ache now spanned his entire body, every fibre of his being resonating with sudden feeling; his already narrowed eyes threatening to close any second against the overwhelming sense of self that threatened to rip him apart in its struggle for rebirth. There was another incomprehensible jab of pain, and his eyes finally squeezed shut, a final thought echoing round his head. _'__oh__ shit..__'  
_

--- _  
_

* * *

---

The pain subsided an instant later, his eyes wrenching open all of a sudden as he gasped loud and long, as if inhaling the first true breath he had been allowed in years; and in many a way, it was. His gaze aimlessly scanned the room around him, his movements imprecise and rushed as he tried to take in the sudden rush of the real world entering his vision once more; seeing the room around him not for what it was, but instead as a haze of coloured shapes, all looming towards him with inexorable amount of force. The sight of such an abruptly forming tangle of different shades was rather overwhelming, chaotic tinted bursts leaping at him from all sides, three dimensional and somehow vastly brighter than the previous blinding whiteness had ever been close to. He put a hand to his head, which had suddenly begun to throb, and an exhausted moan escaped his lips as he closed his eyes again, his head shaking.

"_Draco?"_

His already staggered breath hitched in his throat and he frowned into his palm at the voice, slowly lifting his hand from his face to peer at it's owner. His eyes widened at the blurred shape beside him coming into focus, the expectant look on her face, the slight pout alongside a deeply furrowed brow, all as familiar as if he had only been away from such expressions for mere moments. He opened his mouth in an attempt to speak, but instead he spluttered, his throat dry and too stiff for words quite yet. Trying a few more times to coax his voice into life once more, he eventually managed to choke out a few raw sounding words, his tone deathly flat; as if he was blissfully unaware of the existence of inflection.

"_That depends on who's asking.."_

The figure frowned towards him, reaching a tentative hand and resting it atop his, much to Draco's sudden shock; the feeling of flesh, the touch of another person, the sense of reality he had spent so long pining for; It existed now, finally. As solidified as if it had never left him. The sensation, the contact, the brilliant shudder of feeling that had shot up his arm at her touch, was incredible. He had been so long without such tangible senses, that the simple matter of touch seemed astonishing, miraculous even.

The girl leant forward with a clearly troubled expression, giving his hand a slight squeeze in tandem with such a look and speaking softly toward him, in a tone that one would usually reserve for a troubled infant.

"_Draco.. .. It's Pans-- Um, it's Parkinson.. Pansy Parkinson.. You.. You remember me, right?"_

He laughed slightly at her words, having had an inkling as to what they would be before her lips had even parted; his reaction to such causing her hand to jet away from his as she sat back in her seat, seemingly stunned by any sound emanating from his still rather gaunt looking form. Coughing out a final chuckle, he looked up at her with a slight raise of his brow, the beginnings of a grin curving the corner of his mouth upwards as he rasped out a reply.

"_I'm well aware of who you are, Parkinson.. And I can see Zabini lurking behind you as well, before you ask.. I'm perfectly sane, thank you very much, just a little.. Overwhelmed.."_

He nodded steadily, hoping that neither of the concerned faces in front of him had picked up on the uncertainty to his last few words and frowning to himself as the two exchanged a glance that no doubt meant that his hopes were unfounded. Averting his eyes from the pair of them instantly at such, he took to staring around the room instead of daring to glance back towards either of them.

It was then, and only then, that he noticed where he was: he was at home, _actually_ at home, laying in a large and opulently carved four poster amidst the fine decor of one of the many guest suites that the Malfoy Manor had to offer. His eyes combed the room slowly, scanning over every inch of it, from a line of portraits on the far wall depicting several relatives that Draco had long since forgotten existed, to the dark grey hue of the lavish marble floor with the Malfoy family crest inscribed at its centre, on to the familiar curve of the twin silver serpentine handles set into the heavy oak doors. Smiling to himself as his eyes panned over and over the room, it took him a good few moments to be able to pull his gaze away from the collection of objects surrounding him, ultimately turning back to the expectant faces at his side and frowning slightly as the reality of the situation came flooding back to him.

"_How long have I--"_

"_Eight months."_

Blaise's voice sounded out, as familiarly deep as ever, cutting Draco's words short and soon knocking the next planned sentence from his mouth with the dark skinned boy's deathly serious expression.

"_It's not quite eight yet.. Near a week under that actually, Blaise" _ Pansy cut in, blushing as soon as she had done so and tucking a strand of hair behind her ear before continuing in a slightly quieter tone _"But, uh.. yeah.. Eight months near enough."_

"_Eight mon--" _

Words seemed to suddenly fail him, his features paling far beyond his usually pallid skintone as he tried to get his head round such a fact as eight months of non existence, staring fiercely towards his lap at the thought. Eight months.. That was thirty two weeks.. Two hundred and twenty four days.. Five thousand three hundred and seventy six hours.. He frowned deeply at the increasing numbers, shaking his head as though to stop multiplying, and briefly wondering where he had acquired the easy ability to do so. Tearing his gaze away from his steepled hands, he looked back towards the two of them, croaking out a few words once more.

"_I don't understand.. How--"_

"_Well.."_ Blaise's voice interrupted again. _"Even we weren't sure at first.. We thought someone had managed to slip you the draught of living death or something.. But when the antidote for that did nothing at all, we had to start from scratch.. It's taken weeks to sift through the libraries here, and the ones at Hogwarts as well.. But we found it in the end.."_ Pansy coughed into her hand tellingly and Blaise rolled his eyes. _"Ok, fine.. **Parkinson** found it in the end.. But anyway, turns out it was an old spell, a **really** old spell; somewhat of an antiquity of sorts, in fact.. One called Ante Mortem.."_

Blaise paused, looking down at his hands and frowning slightly to himself. The tall dark skinned boy looked worse than Draco could recall ever having seen him, it was as if he had not had a decent nights sleep in weeks, or perhaps months given his previous declaration on how long Draco had been.. detained..

At any rate, he was clearly exhausted and apparently finding some difficulty in telling the tale he had spent months living waist deep in. Shooting him a reassuring smile that seemed rather forced, Pansy nodded her head, wordlessly assuming the position of storyteller and sitting forward in her seat beside the bed a little. Draco had to bite back the urge to smirk at such; he could almost imagine a copy of 'The tales of Beedle the Bard' sitting in her lap, open at a bookmarked page as she leant forward to narrate the next chapter, her every action seeming rather amusingly reminiscent of a mother putting her child to bed.

Instead, his brow raised curiously, his mouth shut and determined to stay that way until he had a better idea as to what had gone on. As tempting as it was, now was hardly the time for screwing around.

"_It's.. Well, it's supposed to be sort of a preface for death according to any literature we could find on it.." _ She paused, frowning slightly_ "Ancient Dark Wizards used to implement it on their victims while they were pending punishment.. In order to make sure that they wouldn't live to tell the tale of escaping.. It's-- It's sort of an antechamber between the realm of the living and dead.."_

She paused again, her frown having grown ten fold at the chuckle that had burst forth from Draco's mouth alongside her final words. Her expression soon shifted, from nervous bewilderment to a sudden and fierce frustration, her wand in hand before Draco had even had a chance to note she was about to draw it from her pocket. He stared between the wand - that was now near touching the tip of his nose, causing his eyes to cross dizzyingly as he tried to focus on it - and Pansy's furious expression; trying not to grin at such a sense of normality having resumed before he'd even got himself out of the bed. As he stared, Pansy's eyes narrowed, her voice a low growl.

"_Merlin help me, you'd better have a good explanation for--"_

She stopped abruptly, turning her angered frown to one side of her where Blaise had already placed a hand on her shoulder to steady her wand arm, shaking his head at such an action and coaxing her hand back to her side. With a sigh of acceptance from Pansy, the two bedside figures turned back to a still mildly chuckling Draco, who waved a weak hand of dismissal, shaking his head slightly as the two non-Malfoy's stared on in quiet disbelief.

"_Cheers, mate.. That just sounded absurdly similar to something I thought when I first came round in.. well.. wherever that place was.."_ he shrugged, feebly nodding towards them both again _"Go on, I'm rapt with attention."_

He smirked, earning a matching look from Blaise for a brief moment before Pansy sighed, sounding rather frustrated as she interrupted the boys' silent exchange in order to speak again.

"_It's dark magic, Draco! **Very **dark magic.. It's not designed for longevity.. It's merely designed to keep the person prisoner until their punishment has been decided upon. Most people die within hours of it being cast.."_

Draco frowned curiously, sitting up a little straighter in the bed and tilting his head to one side, his look seeming to plead her to continue. Sighing once more, Pansy nodded, interpreting the look as meant and continuing in a slightly smaller voice.

"_Well.. The way it works, is that you're sort of bound, trapped within the curse until you've admitted defeat; until you've accepted your fate.."_

"_What do you mean 'Accepted your fate?'"_

He interrupted with a bewildered frown. Pansy sighed again.

"_Well, what applies to you within the binds of the curse, also applies to your existence outside of it. If you give up -- become as lifeless as you feel, cry to the point of exhausting yourself emotionally, lay down and admit defeat, that sort of thing -- then it translates to your state outside; your physical state. Most people give in within hours, days at a push. But generally, people will readily face the fact that they are destined to perish rather than continue their suffering, and they do just that; perish due to the fact that they truly believed that their fate was as such…"_

She hesitated again, looking towards him earnestly, a hint of fear clearly visible amidst the darkness of her eyes.

"_No one knows how you survived this long, Draco.. Or.."_

Blaise rapidly hushed her with a severe frown, his hand rocketing into the air in a bid for her silence; to which she readily complied, hanging her head slightly and pouting towards her lap.

"_He needs to rest, Pans.. The other stuff can wait until--"_

"_Rest?!"_ Draco's voice erupted again, his arms folded across his chest as he continued in the same indignant tone. _"I don't want to bloody well rest! I want to walk.. I want to eat, drink, sleep.. Anything but more fucking rest.."_

"_Don't argue with me Malfoy, just trust me." _Blaise snapped rather viciously, shooting the boy a glare to which Draco looked utterly lost for words. _"We bought you back, so just be grateful for a change and stop whining. It's not like we let you die.." _

Draco was flummoxed; it was not often that Zabini dared take such a tone with him, even given the fact that the boys had been friends since long before they could remember, and perhaps, in many a way, his refusal to seethe over the blonde's attempts was indeed due to such a matter holding true. The fact remained that it took something with a level of prominent severity for Blaise to adopt such a tone with him, and it had always been in Draco's best interest to listen when he did. With a sigh of defeat, the blonde rolled his eyes.

"_Fine.. Consider me bed-bound. Just do me a favour and bring me a drink.. A proper drink.."_

Blaise smiled briefly, offering a nod and a slight smirk at Draco's parting words.

"_Good boy.."_ he grinned _"One bottle of Ogdens best coming up.. Although I'm limiting you to a single glass. I don't fancy getting killed by your mother when she gets back to an alive but clearly drunk Heir to the Malfoy throne.."_

Draco's eyes instantly widened at the mention of Narcissa.. His mother.. The owner of the voice that had caused his throat to burn from trying to scream out after her. The lady whose opinions on pureblood supremacy he had repeated inside his head as though some insane mantra, whose childhood stories he had tried to recount as he lay in the bleakness of the world he had been trapped inside.

He had to see her, had to know she was alive, that her voice had not been a mere illusion of his dreamless state.

"_Where is she? … My mother, I want to see her. My Father too." _

Blaise and Pansy both looked at him with matching indecipherable expressions before turning towards each other and exchanging a rather regretful glance, the look on both of their faces seeming far too out of place for Draco to discern what either one meant. Frowning at the exchange and positively hating - as ever - to be left out of the loop even if he wasn't meant to be included just yet, he sighed frustratedly, his brow furrowing dramatically.

"_I had rather hoped that you'd get the point of my previous statement without me having to add the word **now **into the equation…"_

He scowled slightly towards them, his arms still folded harshly across his chest as the two figures before him exchanged another look before nodding, the pair of them heading out of the door - only Pansy pausing in the doorframe to shoot Draco what he was sure was supposed to be a reassuring smile - and leaving him alone in the stillness of the room once more.

---

* * *

---

It was not long until the hurried click of Narcissa's high heeled shoes rang out along the hallway leading towards the guest suite, sidetracking Draco's attention from the vial he had been twirling in between his fingers and causing his eyes to sweep towards the door with an expectant gaze. As if on cue, the handle clicked upwards and the door swung open, colliding with the wall beside it with a loud bang that the lady of the Manor seemed to either not notice, or not care about whatsoever.

"_Oh, my boy!"_ She near shrieked, hurrying across the room throwing herself atop the bed sheets; flinging her arms around Draco's neck, burying her head tightly in his shoulder and sobbing delightedly into it between mutters. _"My darling boy!"_

His eyes had widened at such a display and he found himself quite lost for both words and action for a moment. Throughout his mothers coddling over the years - her constant efforts to put Draco in Lucius' good books when he had done wrong, her dry kisses on the cheek before he left to board the Hogwarts Express, and her smiling terms of endearment as she would push her son's hair from his face, commenting on how he was as handsome as his father had been at such an age - he had never seen her being so outwardly emotional and had certainly never been held so tightly, nor fiercely by the woman who was now near threatening to crush his bones under her vice like grip of an embrace. As a Malfoy, it was considered rather unbecoming to show such weakness as positive emotion; his father's constant and ever stoic refrain was enough to solidify such a fact, and Draco after all, was nothing if not his Father's son, and therefore rather taken aback by such a motion.

Wrapping his arms around his mother finally and gripping her fiercely for a moment before loosening his hold, his mind suddenly raced back through his previous thoughts until he hit upon one key mention; his Father. Leaning his head over the top of his mothers shoulder and peering around the room for a moment, he soon pushed her slightly away from him, staring her in the eye as his voice sounded out quietly, almost desperately.

"_W--Where's Father?"_

Narcissa's already waxen face paled even more so than usual, her eyes softening and seeming to brim with tears at such a mention. Draco frowned, his heart sinking in his chest as he slumped down a little further in the bed; as much as he hated to even fathom such a thought, he knew the answer to his query without Narcissa having to say a single word.  
Lucius Malfoy, was dead.

---

* * *

_**A/N:** sniffle.. lol.. (Sorry Paula!! Don't poke me with spoons, you know I'm allergic in an 'I shall die' sense :p lol) I must mention that I took no pleasure whatsoever in killing off Lucius so early, but the story demanded it, so who am I to refute such? lol. Besides, I became rather attached to the way I ended it, as well as it being a matter of me either stopping there, or sobbing exhaustedly into the keyboard lol. (yes, I'm well aware of the overly excessive Malfoy love.. lol.)_

_Next chapter is pretty well formed in my head, so again, shouldn't be too long a wait._

_Also, thanks to justawritier for the review, I only hope that the story continues to intrigue you as it pans out._

_I so need to sleep now..._

_As always; R&R S'il Vous Plaît ;) _


	3. Invested Indifference

**Chapter Three:**

**Invested Indifference**

**---------------------------------------**

"_Home's face: how it ages when you're away  
Spring blooms and you find the love that's true  
But you don't know what now to do  
Cause the chase is all you know  
And she stopped running months ago"_

Your Heart is an Empty Room - Death Cab for Cutie

**---------------------------------------**

* * *

His eyes could have been fixed on the curls of bed sheets that were entwined between his fingers for either seconds or hours, Draco could not tell. Words had seemed to fail him over and over despite the sickening air to the silence that had fallen between him and his mother, and no speech would come no matter how hard he willed the words to burst forth from his dry throat. He felt dumb, deaf and blind. Entirely numb. 

"_Draco.."_

Narcissa's voice was soft, imploring even, as she leant forward a little, resting her hand on top of one of Draco's, which were still fiercely holding the fabric as though the world would tumble with it should he release his grip. He didn't feel her touch, he didn't feel much of anything except the burning need for his thoughts on his Father's potential death to be confirmed or annulled. Either way, he just needed to know. To be sure.

"_Say it." _He near choked out the words in a barely audible but clearly tense whisper._ "Just.. Say it.."_

Narcissa's eyes dropped towards her lap, their usual brilliance seeming lost within such an utterance, and in a moment they seemed to fade entirely to a chillingly pale shade of blue that seemed so far detached from her usual brightly alert gaze that Draco wondered for a moment if he was really awake at all. Desperately hoping that he was not.

"_He--" _She began, trying to keep her voice from wavering and failing in an instant as her hand leapt up towards her mouth to stifle a dry sob. Draco tried hard to swallow the lump in his throat, such a motion taking several moments to prove possible; and even then, it felt as though he were trying to choke down a violently squirming entity that sprang right back into it's previous existence the moment he thought he had managed to subdue it.

"_He-- He's dead.. Isn't he?" _

His voice was icy cold, laced with a brutally detached air which, despite being clearly forced, only made his mother's eyes even glassier at the painful similarity of Draco's tone to that of her late husband's. She paused briefly, her hand still over her mouth and her head bowed unceremoniously towards her lap as she turned her watering eyes up to meet her son's, her head slowly nodding in tandem.

It felt as if someone had dropped the entire Malfoy manor and it's surrounding grounds atop Draco's chest, the air leaving his lungs in one silent, breathless motion and his world seeming to spin out from under him alongside her mute reply; irrevocably changed, forever. His words were suddenly stunted again, each potential reply to such news forming angry coils of sound in his throat that rippled and scattered into nothingness before they had the chance to leave his mouth, rendering him as mute as his mother had been just moments before.

So the two sat in silence, Narcissa's tears dripping down her porcelain cheeks and onto the silvery fabric of her dress and scattering a haphazard pattern of tiny woeful blotches onto the silken fabric, as though it were a pointless greyscale abstract that some finger-painting fool would give a pretentious title and dub as art. Draco had yet to notice such a budding masterpiece in the making though; his eyes instead focussed hazily on his own two pale hands which were set, almost prayer like, in his lap and clasped so tightly together that his knuckles had turned an almost ethereal shade of white. The imperfections in his nails were suddenly so much more apparent that he would ever have liked; their usually flawless tips seeming jagged and cruel looking at the ends of his pale bony fingers, stretching out far enough from each finger that they had already scored several uneven red semicircles in the skin either side of his knuckles. He often tended to focus on the mundane as a makeshift escape route from reality; his eyes absently tracing round the patterns in the gild wallpaper or stonework of the nearest wall, reciting potions instructions with perfect clarity over and over inside his head, counting the fine blonde hairs he could see on whatever part of his arm happened to be protruding from his shirt at the time. But this was different. The walls seemed featureless, ashen and untraceable. His arms seemed bare, stone-like almost, and very much unlike arms at all and more like useless appendages that he could not focus on if he tried. Every single potion he had ever learnt how to make, outside of as well as under Snape's tutelage, seemed distant and foggy, pointless and futile to a point where his mind refused to speak such instructions aloud inside his mind. There were no words, no thoughts, no feeling. Just nothing

"_I'm so sorry, Draco.. "_

Narcissa's voice finally broke the silence, pained and timid sounding to a point which Draco almost wanted to snap at her for sounding so weak. Thankfully, he didn't have the energy nor the conviction to carry out such a pointless train of thought and instead remained staring pointedly at his lap, denying her a reaction of any sort. Hearing her draw breath, as though she were about to speak again, he simply shook his head firmly, refusing to look up towards her as he frowned towards his lap, his voice almost disturbingly even as he managed to summon speech once again.

"_I doubt it was you who killed him, so _don't_ apologise.. Just-- tell me what happened."_

Narcissa looked up momentarily and sighed as she blinked back a few more tears, a slender finger wiping the remaining wetness from beneath her eyes, her voice small but rather tellingly furious within such a quiet utterance.

"_The Potter boy.. Was followed when he came to meet with the Dark Lord. He was mere moments from death when the Order resurfaced and attacked en masse. Your Father.." _She halted briefly, sighing. _"Set to duelling with _Nymphadora_.." _She spat her niece's name out, her voice sharp enough to cut glass._**"**He was trying to prove a point to our Lord, given his words on her union with the werewolf I imagine.. But he made the mistake of killing her in plain sight of that revolting husband of hers without realizing his mistake, and.." _She paused again, her eyes beginning to water slightly and her voice sounding more strained than Draco ever recalled having heard it before. _"Well, by the time he had turned, it was already too late.."_

Draco's eyes narrowed in revulsion, the sudden hatred towards his least favourite of the various old Defence Against the Dark Arts professors scoring several furious lines in his face due to a heavily furrowed brow. Gritting his teeth and having to think momentarily on holding himself to the bed to keep from leaping from it to pace the room, his fists balled themselves more tightly in bunches of the quilt, fiercely gripping the fabric as he stared silently towards his lap and finally managing to choke out a few noxious sounding words.

"_The werewolf.. Is he-"_

"_Dead? Yes. I killed him myself."_

Draco simply nodded at his mothers coldly matter of fact interruption, seeming as satisfied as one could be with such a reply given that it was only a brief silver lining on a very dark cloud that felt as though it would remain looming above him forever more.

"_The Potter boy finally had the decency to meet his fate also; at the hands of our lord, of course."_

Draco's gaze shifted, lifting instantly to meet the now faintly smiling face of Narcissa at her words, his eyes widening and both eyebrows lifting in a mixture of impress and curiosity.

"_Wait.. You mean.."_

She nodded, such an action cutting his words short as she continued to smile slightly; although with a rather unnatural amount of force behind such an action that caused Draco to momentarily wonder on whether he was reading the concealed grief in her expression, or something else entirely.

"_Yes. Harry Potter is dead. We won, my boy.. But Draco, there are things you must understand. We are truly in his service now, far more so than ever before. Luckily, your father's actions coupled with my own and Bella's seemed enough to grant us back some of our previous favour. You and I both. But.." _She hesitated briefly, her voice lowering a fraction to a serious whisper. _"There is no room for more mistakes. You must do all in your power to serve him and serve him to your utmost when he calls for you, and he will. It's only a matter of time before he realizes you have woken." _

"_What?" _Draco frowned, confused._ "He-- He wants to see _me_?"_

"_Of course he does my boy! You are heir to the Malfoy name, the link to the renewed survival of this blood-line! Given the number of us that perished at the hands of the Order and various other rebels; those of us of noble blood are a far more important factor now than ever before. Due to such, our Lord has been most interested in the matter of your recovery. Why, he has even sat beside this bed_ himself _once or twice.." _She sighed, putting the back of her hand to his head with a slight pursing of her lips._ "Are you quite sure you're feeling yourself, darling?_

But Draco had stopped listening. His father was dead. The Dark Lord had been sat at his bedside, perhaps in Lucius' stead. Harry potter had been killed and Voldemort had risen to power finally. But despite the semi-joyous revelation he could feel willing itself to surface at such a thought; the fact remained, most importantly, that his Father was dead. Gone.

His mouth opened, as though to suddenly counter his mother's parting words, just as the door swung open again to reveal Blaise and Pansy standing in the doorway, each wearing the same sympathetic expression as the other and Blaise with a large glass of Firewhiskey in one hand, poised and ready to hand it across to his best friend. The drinking aspect of their promised reappearance, however, had been long forgotten in the moments since they had left the room, especially given that the joint expression that the two were now wearing, made Draco want to merely scream and hightail it to the nearest dark corner to seethe quietly. To mourn, alone.

They knew. They knew and hadn't said a word. That was what the pitiful glance toward him had been over before they had left the room; which, in Draco's current state, seemed to instantly blacken any good intention they may have had with such a reappearance.

It was Pansy who edged forwards first, Blaise placing a hand on her arm as though to hold her back and having the motion swiftly flung back in his face - almost literally - as Pansy shrugged him off with a surprising amount of force, causing a little of the amber liquid inside the glass in his hand to spill onto the floor with a dull splash. She stalked slowly towards him, her face a mask of remorse which Draco took to mean that she had not intended to go along with the plan of glossing over the matter of his Father's death should he wake. Despite the purity of her blood, the raven haired girl had always had a rather brazen lack of respect for what such a thing meant when it came to certain traditionally based aspects of it, and delightfully so at points. Sadly, this was not one of them.

"_Draco.. I'm so--"_

Her saddened words were cut off with a sudden flash of movement from the direction of the bed, although all eyes darted instantly to an ancient looking vase on a table to one side of her as it exploded and shattered into tiny shards of sharp colour, flecks of shimmering dust which had once been an intricate design of gold leaf floating down around it and settling gracefully on the marble floor. Pansy frowned, not daring to speak any further as she clocked the severe expression on Draco's face, his wand still pointed towards her in one shaking hand as he glared towards the two former Slytherins stood between his bed and the door.

"_I don't need your pity, Parkinson."_ He snapped, his gaze soon turning on Blaise with narrowed eyes _"And if _anyone else_ apologies to me, they'll end up in a similar dusty pile on the floor. Understood?"_

The room fell into near silence once more, Narcissa's slight sniffling, Pansy's aggravated swallowing and Blaise's pronounced sigh being the only sounds daring to briefly interrupt before quietness fell once more over the group like a dark, heavy blanket. Draco frowned towards his lap, twirling his wand limply in one hand with a slightly ponderous expression, aware of the three sets of eyes fixed on him, but denying them all the pleasure of a response to such.

The silence was almost deafening, the three other figures in the room seeming to do nothing but stare and wait for him to make the first move when it came to any further conversation. He could see Pansy out of the corner of his eye, twirling a strand of midnight hair around one finger in front of her face as Blaise stood slightly behind her, casually sipping from the glass in his hand as though it was a thoroughly natural reaction to being thrust headfirst into such a suddenly discomfited situation; the darker boy creating the only vague sign of movement as he cast the odd look between Draco and Narcissa as though such surveillance would grant him an easy way to appease the harsh quietness of the room.

Looking uncharacteristically worry stricken and far paler than usual under such a scrutinizing gaze, Draco flung the covers from his body and into a pile at the foot of the bed, stepping out of it onto two tentative legs that wavered briefly before allowing him to stand and turn a blank expression on the small assembly before him.

"_I'll be in my room"_

Without a single word more, Draco strode towards the door without a backwards glance, wanting to be as far away from the room that he was subconsciously aware of having been stuck in for the past few months and leaving the three remaining occupants to exchange rather anxious stares with one and other.

"_I'll go after him.."_

Blaise spoke with a sigh, offering a rather forced smile towards the two before heading towards the door and only pausing at the feel of a hand on his upper arm, the shaking head of Narcissa flooding his vision as he turned back to face her. Smiling kindly at the boy - who, still unbeknownst to Draco, had been officially in the blonde haired woman's care since his mother had been slain several months ago by a dreadfully well aimed Killing curse - she gave his arm a rather motherly squeeze, head still shaking slightly from side to side.

"_No, it's alright Blaise. Pansy will go, wont you dear?"_

Blaise raised an eyebrow and looked between the two women; Narcissa's eyebrow raising a fraction as well as she glanced towards Pansy, who seemed to be staring back in some sort of wordless understanding. Nodding her head once, the brunette smiled briefly before heading towards the door, mouthing something to Blaise that provoked a smirk as Narcissa's back was turned, and setting off to trail Draco's hastened route through the corridors without question.

* * *

Pansy had quietly echoed his footsteps all the way through the halls, as watchful as a cat in pursuit of its prey and always a step behind but not daring to close the gap between the two; and for this, Draco was especially thankful. His own eyes stared blankly ahead, not risking a look behind him for fear of provoking conversation with the girl following him, as his legs carried him back towards his own bed. He didn't want to talk, didn't want to vent or spill his proverbial guts over the brunette in his wake, he just couldn't. It seemed almost redundant to be the last Malfoy male standing and feel the need to talk out his feelings over what had happened, such a thought in itself causing Draco to emit a soundless chuckle that barely shook his body. So he continued to walk in resolute silence, his steps slow and measured as he paced the familiar halls towards his bedroom; his lips faintly quirking up at the corners as he finally reached the door in a motion which, ordinarily, would have been a wide smile under any other circumstance. 

Immediately stepping inside with a flick of his wrist to lock the door behind him, he was instantly struck by the unwavering and slightly odd familiarity of the space. Its high Mahogany bookshelves lining one large wall, littered with a combination of questionably dark reading material and years worth of inanimately actualized memories. The four poster bed with its silken black hangings and high arches of elaborately carved Ebony, in which he had whiled away many hours of summer holidays, scowling at his wand and wishing he was finally of an age to be able to use it outside of Hogwarts' walls. The large crystalline bay window opposite the door with its familiar curls of serpentine lead piping on the outside of the upper panes, from which he could view the vast expanse that was the manor grounds and the several creatures that inhabited such an immense space.

His eyes were suddenly fixed on the striking window view, his feet leading him towards it without a moments pause and his hands finding the familiar edge of the windowsill, using it to prop himself up as he gazed out into the distance. A small grove of towering Birch trees with their silvery trunks gleaming in the fading afternoon sun, were set to the side of a rather expansive lake to the north of the grounds, as they had always been, and when squinting his eyes a little he could soon make out the small forms of two majestic white peacocks roaming the immaculately kept grass beneath. He sighed to himself, his eyes raking over the rest of the grounds but always coming back to that one particular spot and the slew of fond memories that it provoked. Allowing himself a few more moments of nostalgia, he soon turned his head over his shoulder to face the door where Pansy was no doubt lurking on the other side of the hard wooden divide. Turning back to the window, he sighed again; he wasn't likely to get through the rest of the day without at least one of the houses occupants checking up on him, and at least with Pansy, he'd have a little more sway over where the conversation went.

She hadn't needed to knock. He knew she was there, waiting outside with her fist poised over the heavy oak ready to rap on its surface, and with a simple flick of his wrist behind him the handle flew upwards and the door swung open as he turned back to his previous view; the sight of her faint, raised handed reflection in the window instantly telling him that he had been right in his thoughts.

Her arms found their way around his waist within mere moments of her heels clacking across the stone floor towards him, and gently rested there just above his hips - which he had suddenly noticed, seemed to protrude far more than usual under her slender grip. He sighed, feeling thoroughly resigned to playing nice for at least a short while due to a strangely prominent and quite irrational seeming lack of energy.

"_Hi.." _He said, blankly, not having to turn round to know that she was pouting at such. Parkinson was nearly always pouting, especially in such grave circumstances that somehow involved him. He thought idly back to their third year when she had sobbed relentlessly over the halfbreed's damn Hippogriff tearing a chunk from his arm and almost smirked. Almost.

"_Hi?"_ She relinquished her pout in favour of a slight smirk _"And here was me thinking I'd end up in the same state as that bit of pottery for opening my mouth again.. What a disturbingly pleasant surprise."_

"_That was no piece of pottery, Parkinson." _He replied, dryly._ "It was a rather priceless antique. One worth more than the entire Weasley clan could make from whoring out their whole pathetic ginger lot for an entire decade, I'd imagine." _He shrugged thoughtfully_ "Not that the monetary aspect of things really need concern me all that much any more, I suppose"_

His voice was annoyingly calm, gravely void of emotion and weighted even more-so by the pause he took to follow; his eyebrow arching a little as he began to speak again, his eyes still scanning over the dots of random colour that littered the expanse of green outside.

""_So, to what do I owe the questionable pleasure of your company, Parkinson?"_

She rolled her eyes behind the boy as she reached for his shoulders and span him to face her. Cocking a curious brow as she moved her gaze from his and scanned appraisingly down the length of his slightly scruffy white-blonde hair, she stopped at his shoulders with a slight grin, turning her gaze back to his and shrugging.

"_Well, it's either the rugged handsomeness that it appears has overcome you since you decided to be alive again - and apparently decided against cutting your hair within an instant of waking.." _She smirked, briefly raising a perfectly sculpted eyebrow before her brow furrowed slightly, her face taking on a slightly more sincere expression. _"Or perhaps, it's just that given your eight month absence and-- and all that's happened since.. I thought you might be rather in the mood for some company.. I'll let you decide."_

She loosened her grip on his waist and relooped her arms around his neck as Draco, despite accepting such an action, seemed to take her proposed decision making seriously rather than in its intended jest as his arms impulsively found their way around her. Shrugging his shoulders a moment later, he forced a smirk.

"_I'll leave that decision until after you've either annoyed or amused me to the point of utter intolerance.."_

She grinned slightly, shaking her head with a soundless chuckle and tilting her head to one side.

"_As charming as ever, Malfoy.. Seriously though.. Are you - you know - _Ok_?"_

He shrugged again, his eyes suddenly flushed of any telling signs of emotion beneath the surface.

"_I'll live."_

His voice was stern, enough to provoke a sigh of frustrated defeat from Pansy and she soon gave up on the idea of questioning him in favour of leaving the room un-hexed and - at the very least - with a smile on her face.

"_Yes, I imagine you will. You have a nasty habit of that, don't you?"_

With the ghost of a smirk apparent on his lips, he leant his forehead against hers with an almost amused sounding sigh. _"__Very funny. Just stop trying to pretend that you__'__ve not been sobbing in your room for weeks over this whole ordeal and shut up about it already, will you? The vase option is still decidedly valid, you know..__"_

She grinned, rolling her eyes and pressing her forehead hard into his for a moment before lessening the pressure and nodding her head.

"_I know."_ She paused, smiling up at him. _"I-- I actually missed you, you know.. Threats and all."_

Draco very nearly smiled in return, the corners of his mouth turning upward but falling short of anything that could be described as a genuine expression. Instead of actually trying for anything more, he simply nodded, cupping her chin in one hand with a rather convincing fake grin despite his eyes somewhat tellingly blank even as he winked down at her.

"_I know."_

The door swung abruptly open again and cut off any intended reply from Pansy as an oblivious looking girl walked through it with her eyes fixed on the floor and a pile of pressed grey bed linen in her outstretched arms, which she immediately dropped to the floor, her mouth following the motion, as she spotted the two bodies stood in embrace by the window. Their attention immediately turned towards her; Pansy with a roll of her eyes and Draco with a mute look of shock and a furrowed brow. Who the hell was she and what was she doing in _his_ room? As if reading his mind, Pansy waved a hand, seemingly rather used to such an interruption or at least being able to fathom an easy explanation for it.

"_Oh, she's one of the new servants: a Mudblood." _she spat the word out as if it were poison._ "I don't recall which one she is exactly, but she's safe enough - they're all wandless now. She's one of a few working here."_

Draco frowned more so, wondering if her words were meant to clarify things or simply confuse him more given his current ignorance to the new world, the look of annoyed puzzlement all too clear set in his steadily darkening eyes. He didn't meet Pansy's gaze, instead staring at the servant girl, who had swiftly collected up the linens from the floor, refolded them in a flash and stacked them on the end of the bed before standing, hands behind her back and her head bowed towards the two as though awaiting orders, or perhaps punishment. His father had always said, after all, '_A good servant should be recognised by their work: _never _by their face.__'_The thought alone spurred a sudden blinding outrage, clearly evident in his tone.

"_A mudblood.. _Here_?! In my Father's house!"_

His voice was like shattered glass, deathly sharp despite the clear quality of being broken. Pansy sighed wearily.

"_It's all part of the new accord, Draco. It is what the Dark Lord wishes."_

She spoke with a practiced ease that felt rather unsettling for some reason, her words sounding like that of a brainwashed teen in some religious cult, as sure and rehearsed as if the words were a mantra she had been forced to repeat time and time again simply to quote at random wherever applicable.

Draco had been so thoroughly lost in such a surge of thought that he had barely noticed Pansy detaching herself from his grasp and padding slowly, with a considerably animalistic air, across the floor and towards the now half cowering servant girl with her wand in hand and a sly grin on her face. His mind was too busy swimming with her previous words, or more so the assured air to them, briefly wondering if the dark mark had been burned into her pale flesh in his absence and had served to lace her words with the air of conviction that they had displayed. The word 'accord' struck a nerve as well, it seemed so foreign yet so prominent; like the name of a far off country you knew you knew nothing about and would never visit, but would always silently wish to. He wanted to know more, to inquire further and demand an explanation, but his thoughts were soon swayed as reality snapped back into focus at the sound of Pansy's voice; a low predatory sounding purr as she circled the girl slowly, looking her up and down with a grudgingly feral glare.

"_What _is _your name, girl? I'm sure the master of the manor is just _dying _to know.."_

Her words were cruelly mocking. She was an untamed feline, verbally batting at the vermin at her feet with each voracious flick of her tongue, ready to sink her teeth in as soon as she tired of the chase. Her sugary sarcasm wasn't lost on the girl either; her head having lowered even more so towards the floor, her cheeks reddening and her hair hanging in long untidy dirty-blonde straggles over her lips; the bottom one of which was tugged into her mouth and held so tightly between her teeth that the coppery taste of blood had long washed over her tongue.

"_It's-- It's Edeline, Mistress.. Most call me Edie"_

Her slight accent was one that Draco recognised but could not seem to place when faced with how fearful and small tone had been, making her already minute stature appear even slighter when accompanied with such a sound. He wondered fleetingly if his mother ever allowed the newer lot of staff to eat based on the bony form of the girl, but he didn't dwell on such a thought for long; it was not as if he _actually_ _cared_ either way.

"_Edeline?"_ he scoffed, suddenly recognising the name from past days when he had dutifully studied both exhaustingly long branches of his family tree, over and over in his youth. It meant 'noble', or 'high born' - two things that the girl stood before him was, most definitely, not. _"A rather absurdly ill-fitting moniker for a worthless Mudblood slave, don't you think? I only hope that the parents who gave you such a name had the common decency to die young."_

She resisted the urge to frown at the biting coldness of his words, allowing her eyes to briefly flick upward to meet Draco's in a brilliant haze of amber and gold that seemed to be reflected right back at her in the dullness of his cold grey counterparts. Her gaze lingered there for the smallest of moments before she turned away, her face reddening even more under the embarrassment and slight fear of having caught his eye and such a thing rendering her easily without comment. Draco offered up another rather belligerent glare at the girl's silence as Pansy, spotting something rather telling in the girl's expression, quirked a brow and allowed a slight but noticeably derisive laugh to leave her lips.

"_It even astounds me at points.. Even when he's belittling you, he's quite magnificent, isn't he?"_ She smirked, her voice half teasing. _"A lot more so when he's awake rather than comatose, although he does lack that sort of angelic restfulness of sleep, wouldn't you agree, Edie?"_

Draco rolled his eyes, leaning up against the window ledge and folding his arms across his chest, wondering when Pansy would be done with her fun and games and casting another bored glance towards his - still uneven - nails to pass the time. The servant girl, on the other hand, looked suddenly far more flushed than before, shaking her head from side to side as her voice wavered suitably to match.

"_I-- I'm not in a-any position to comment, Mistress.. I know my place well enough to know that."_

Pansy merely grinned, clearly satisfied with the girls flushed reaction for a moment before the proverbial claws threatened to dig in once more.

"_Oh, but you don't really _need_ to comment, do you? I think the look in your eyes says it all, dear.."_

She smirked as she padded back towards Draco, slinking up beside him and near draping herself over him as she brushed away a long near-white tendril of hair that hung down across his eyes, her fingertips raking delicately down his cheek with a rather lascivious grin that she soon turned - albeit more angrily - toward the trembling slave girl. Finding himself rather bored still, Draco pushed Pansy away with a shake of his head, frowning at the sudden thought that he was nothing but an accessory to what seemed to be nothing more than subtle bragging.

"_That's enough, Parkinson."_ He said, firmly. _"This is beginning to get painfully tacky.."_

Ignoring her pouting response, well versed in having to do such, he turned to Edeline - who he could have sworn was wearing the ghost of a smirk on her slightly parted lips - and with a frown, nodded towards the door.

"_Consider yourself dismissed. Just mind when and where you make such appearances in future; as I guarantee my reaction will not be as humane the next time you choose to invade the space of any one of this manor's more worthy occupants. Forget your place again, and you can be sure I'll be the first to show you exactly where it is; and it won't be pretty - not that such a thing would ever be at stake with the likes of you. Just.. Get out.."_

The girl bowed gratefully towards Draco despite the inherent cruelness of his apparent nature, looking simply rather shocked that no hex had stung or blistered her skin as she would usually expect from such a mistake on her part. Offering several quiet thank you's to her young master, she headed backwards out of the room in a flurry of footsteps which only became faster as she reached the corridor outside and raced towards the alleged safety of the servants quarters below.

Draco watched her leave with a slight frown still on his face, little short of furious that a Mudblood with a theoretically dignified name was allowed to roam the halls of the manor even in servitude. Turning to Pansy as soon as Edeline was out of earshot, he shot her a rather inscrutable expression that bordered on complete blankness before staring back at his nails and chipping away at one ruined side of his thumbnail with his index finger.

"Very _classy indeed, Parkinson."_

With a smirking roll of her eyes, Pansy batted at his shoulder with one half closed fist before crossing over towards an oval coffee table topped with a crystal decanter and several gleaming glasses, and flanked with two large winged armchairs of deep black velvet. Seating herself briefly whilst filling a couple of glasses to the brim for the two, she grabbed her own glass as well as the decanter and headed directly for the bed, slumping down upon the pressed covers with a grin and a dismissive wave of her hand as she took a large swig and wriggled herself into a more comfortable position against the pillows.

"_Oh hush, it's always fun to screw with the staff.. What did you think I'd been doing in your absence? Honing my domestic skills?"_

Draco shook his head and chuckled at the absurdity of the thought. The noise seemed strangely foreign coming from his own mouth, although the simple knowledge that such a sound still existed in his own tone was enough to instantly lighten his mood a little despite doing nothing to lift the bulk of his spirits. Following Pansy's previous path, he headed towards the table and plucked his glass from it, necking the contents down without thanks and wincing slightly at the renewed burn in his throat regardless of how satisfying such a feeling was. Staring between his now empty glass and the grinning female he had just noticed to be laid in wait for him across the room, he raised an eyebrow and allowed a slight smirk to curl the corners of his mouth as he took a single step closer to the bed.

"_I suppose I'll be expected to come all the way over there if I fancy a refill, then?"_

Pansy continued to grin and shrugged her shoulders as she finished off the rest of her glass, instantly placing it down on the bed for a top up of her own.

"_Well.. It wasn't a refill I had in mind for you exactly.. But I'll leave such decision making to you." _

Kicking her shoes off and letting them land unevenly on the floor beside the bed, she raised her glass towards the smirking blonde, who seemed to be inching ever closer to the bed with the same instinctive pureblood poise that she had admired for many a year. Reaching the bed a few slow steps later, Draco continued to smirk as he sat down on the edge of the mattress, extending his glass wielding hand with a nod towards it as Pansy raised the decanter and filled it to the brim once more with a slight glower. Chuckling at such, Draco returned a mock pout to such sentiments for a moment before smirking and downing his glass in a series of hastened gulps, grinning at her as he set it back on the bed in wait for another refill.

"_Oh, don't give me that look.. I never said a refill was _all_ I had in mind.."_

* * *

**A/N: **-_Breathes a sigh of relief_- Bloody hell.. I thought I was _never_ going to get this up here.. But, after a third complete rewrite - in which I ended up writing some 10,000 odd words originally, so the intended chapter has been split in two now lol - I think I've got it to go where I needed, although it may not seem as such lol. Do bear with me though, this _is_ going somewhere and will gain a little more momentum in the next few chapters (I hope) Gods of inspiration willing.. Anyway, to anyone reading, let me know what you think, what you liked/hated or whatever. 

Paula, I think I owe you an apology _again_ on the matter of Lucretia… gulps It just happened, I so didn't plan that bit, but it fit so I had to leave it lol. Sorrryyyyy! And Mwah:P I'll stop killing people you're attached to if I can, promise ;) lol!

As always; R&R S'il Vous Plaît ;)


	4. A Binding Nott

**Chapter Four**

**A Binding Nott**

**----------------------------------------**

"_I'm the voice inside your head  
You refuse to hear  
I'm the face that you have to face  
Mirrored in your stare  
I'm what's left, I'm what's right  
I'm the enemy  
I'm the hand that will take you down  
Bring you to your knees"_

Foo Fighters - The Pretender

**----------------------------------------**

* * *

**-- **

The dawn of the following morning flashed into focus in a sudden wave of orange sunlight and nausea, Draco's head pounding as though there was a very small but incredibly real marching band playing to a constant crescendo somewhere inside his skull. The petite and decidedly naked figure curled into the side of his body, whose dark hair clung in knotted tangles to the outstretched arm she was laid across, didn't help matters either. Waking to such closeness after so long alone was suffocating to the point that Draco instantly felt the need to tear his grip out from under her, roll over onto his side and reach a hand out towards his nightstand and the still half-filled crystal tumbler of Firewhiskey that had been left there from the night before. Downing the warm liquid and spluttering slightly into the empty glass at the sudden heat claiming his throat, he raked a hand back through his still-moist hair with a frown at the cascade of images that followed, flowing through his mind as though the floodgate that had once been holding back his memories had inexplicably burst.

He remembered the previous night in a haze of amusement and detached contentment, as real now as it had been just hours before. But it was the dreams that had followed which plagued him. Images of darkness and obscurity had danced beneath his flickering eyelids throughout his slumber, lingering as materially in his mind as though he were still living it upon waking. Shadowy caverns that stretched on for miles, endless and uncompromising. Screams that bounced against the walls of his mind as though they had no escape. Violent waves of suffering for sin's he could not recall committing.

And his Father - every gift and commendation, every argument and conversation, every hex and harsh expression. All ringing round inside his head alongside the constant sound of his heart pounding rapidly against his ribcage.

He wondered if grief was like this for everyone; if such a mental state was actually unavoidable for any one person who was born to parents that they hadn't idly wanted to murder in cold blood at some point during their childhood, even due to some juvenile level of miscommunication. He wondered if it was simply love that provoked the loss being so great. He had never told his father that he loved him, and he wasn't sure that he had ever even had real premise to. Respect: certainly. But love? That felt ridiculously uncertain. Love was a word he acquainted with his mother wiping away his tears as she fixed up a bloody knee during his younger years, when he and Blaise had raced toy brooms around the house, despite their mother's pleas, and had near demolished an antique side table due to such. It was a word he associated with the need for such an emotion; and Draco Malfoy needed nothing. At least that's what he had told himself for as long as he could remember, or perhaps simply for as long as he had been taught to think the way of one who was clearly bred into such a particular mold.

Trying vehemently to banish such thoughts from his head - filling his glass a good three or four times from the near empty decanter before he even had the momentum to crawl out of bed and find a few vital items of discarded clothing - he finally found himself pacing towards the window again, staring out at the view with a freshly replenished glass in one hand and a scowl on his face. No matter where his eyes scanned, his mind dared not wander. The only thought that remained was his father, and more so the need to close the chapter of his demise even though it had only just begun.

Leaving his newly emptied glass on the window ledge, he headed towards the corner of the room in which a large doorway led towards his generous en suite bathroom, and what he fondly remembered to be an agreeably hot and soothing shower within. Once inside, he crossed to the sink as he lazily flung the clothes from his body once more, not paying any attention to such a familiar route or its surroundings and instead letting his eyes fix on the cold tap as he headed towards it, quickly turning it and watching as the water cascaded out, allowing him to splash handful after icy handful of the cold liquid up into his face. Leaning his wet hands either side of the sink once done, he instantly looked up to assess whether his splashing had made him look any less hungover than he felt, and gasped at the reflection that the mirror presented him with.

Despite his ever-present vanity, he had not yet thought to even briefly glance in a mirror upon waking from his eight months of enforced bed-rest; the circumstances to which he had woken easily having clouded any arbitrary want to check if the battle that had enforced his slumber had left him scarred or unkempt. Thankfully, it seemed that that had not been the case, aside from a thin pale scar running along the left side of his jaw which he remembered upon running his fingers over it, to have sustained somewhere between his journey from inside the school to the castle grounds at the tail end of the battle. But such an explicable marking was not what concerned him, as there was a far more alarmingly distinct change in his facial appearance, one which caused his breath to hitch in his throat as his widened eyes stared blankly back at him. His hair, hanging in moist tangles around the now sharp angles of his face, was as blonde as ever but now brushing just past his shoulders even despite its rather matted state. His jaw had a liberal sprinkling of fair coloured stubble and was far harder set than he remembered it being; in fact, the angles of his entire face seemed sharper than before, as though his skin had clung to each pointed contour of bone with the same desperation as Draco himself had hung on to his existence for the last eight months. But it was his eyes that troubled him most; their previous shine had vanished, leaving them sat blankly, like faded silvery pearls in their sockets, as cold and dulled as if they had sat there for an eternity or more. Frowning deeply at such realization, he quickly grabbed up a brush from the counter and began aggressively tugging it through his hair, each tiny crackle as the strands broke in places feeling oddly satisfying as he slowly turned the previously matted mess into a smooth fall of silvery blonde that promptly shone more than enough to make up for his lifeless eyes.

Thoughts of a shower long forgotten within his sudden quiet disbelief, he headed back into his bedroom with a fleeting want to never pass his own reflection again. Quickly dressing himself in something a little more fitting to his intended next stop - a freshly pressed and entirely black ensemble that hung from his skinny form a little baggier than he ever would have liked - he proceeded to scribble a quick letter to explain his absence on a sun-bleached piece of parchment that had clearly been sat atop his desk for merlin-knows how long, setting the finished note on the nightstand beside Pansy's slumbering form with a sigh and a smile as his eyes raked over the sleeping girl's arm, now everlastingly stained with a sinister serpent and skull the very same as the brand on his own left arm. Taking one last look around the room, he made his way hastily out into the hall beyond it, rushing through the corridors on autopilot and soon finding his feet leading him soundlessly down the vastly spiralling staircase and towards the colossal front doors of the Manor; towards where he was sure his Father now resided, in one of the few remaining strictly pureblood burial grounds.

- - - - - - -

Within a moment of apparating to the entrance, Draco noticed the eerie calm that hung over the cemetery; much in fitting with it's occupants he supposed as he pushed open the tall iron gates and wandered through them, making quick work of weaving his way between the ornate but age battered headstones and heading towards a rather large mausoleum set to one side of the generous necropolis. His expression was a picture of pained vacuity, faultlessly portraying the confused emptiness he had felt since his mother had entered the guest room and his fears regarding the lack of his Father being there had been founded. His eyes refused to pay attention to at any of the intricately carved graves that he was trying not to trip over during such blind wandering, not wanting to even momentarily think of the lost lives he was stepping on so carelessly with his own loss so fresh in his mind. He had still not managed to quite wrap his head around the matter of his Father's death - and the younger Malfoy's hangovers had never held much premise for rational thought over angered musings - but the idea of his father's demise being true, seemed as vast and austere as his last eight months; even bleaker perhaps. It seemed quite absurd for the Dark Lord to have finally risen to power while his father slept off his efforts to fight for such a cause in a cold tomb beneath the dirt. Quite consumed with such thoughts, he failed to notice the lanky looking boy who was sat Indian style on the grass across from him, his dark hair and scouring eyes near masked almost entirely from view by the bulge of a faintly aged monument rearing up in front of him.

Leaving the hidden figure unknowingly in his wake, Draco reached the large stone structure that he was headed for several moments later, feeling swiftly blind to his other surroundings due to the sudden air of hesitation over taking the few final steps towards it. Stopping to give it an appraising glance, he scanned the carved serpents adorning the large archway entrance with both eyebrows raised in impress; thinking that perhaps his Father had been naught but truthful in his claim that the Malfoys had actually been housed in Slytherin for _centuries_. Staring for a moment more, he soon realized that he seemed quite unable to enter, his feet quite disinclined to step over the threshold into the place where his Father's bones had been put to rest beside generations of fellow Malfoys: where Draco's own body would come to finally rest some day, a long time from now he hoped.

He had visited here once before, several years ago when Lucius had come to pay his respects to his own father, but the memory of the place was as faded now as some of the older etchings on the more the overgrown graves surrounding him. The only recollection he seemed to have, was that his legs had responded the same way then to the cold looming stone as they did now although for much more childish reasons, he thought, given that he'd not even been old enough to have started his Hogwarts tuition at such a time. Suddenly, a smile split the blonde's lips, a chuckle forming in his throat but making no sound as he recalled what his Fathers words had been the last time he had faltered there; Lucius' ever impassive voice tinged with amusement and ringing out in his head as real seeming as the stone stood before him. _'__Come now, boy. It__'__s only stone and dead flesh, neither are likely to bite for goodness sake!__ Not around here anyway_.' With such a thought in mind and the nostalgic smile fixed to his face, his feet found themselves able to move again and he stepped over the threshold into the darkened space.

The room was surprisingly spacious despite its low ceiling and lack of light, clearly having been enlarged to encompass the veritable plethora of heavy tombs that stretched out ominously from wall to wall with walkway sized gaps spacing them out from each other. Numerous gleaming silver vases lined the floor, flush with the walls and sat below corresponding cobwebbed portraits of who the offerings within were meant for; covering the outskirts of the room with a vivid array of colour from the magically preserved flowers jutting out of the containers, each contribution remaining as fresh now as the day it had been plucked from the earth to be placed there.

It had not taken Draco long to discern where his Father in particular was laid to rest, spotting a far less dust ridden portrait hung against the far wall of the room, with a gleaming silver vase containing an elaborate arrangement of flowers- a mix of blood-red Disa and black Ludisia orchids, Narcissa's favourites - set a few feet in front of a newly carved marble tomb. Swallowing a lump that had grown in his throat at the sight, he slowly paced through the maze of marble rising from the earth, the dull echoing thud of his footsteps reverberating round the room as he stepped ever closer to his destination. His legs seemed to grow heavier with every step, pulling him towards the ground and trying to root him to the spot once more. But he refused to comply with his body's wish. He refused to stand defeated in the presence of so many familial nobles, regardless of the fact that they were dead and long gone.

Urging himself forward one aching step at a time, he finally found himself stood face to face - or as close as he would ever get to such again - with his father's visage in portrait form; as smugly severe as it ever had been in life, hung there in front of him on the wall. For a moment, he almost expected it to speak out towards him; to burst into life with any one of the million random things that Draco wished he had heard before waking to such fateful news, much in the style of the Hogwarts portraits he had once passed on a daily basis in the castle's corridors. But no voice came and not a sound was heard but Draco's slow exhalation of breath as he realized that such a thought was probably futile seeing as a burial place was hardly the most fitting environment in which to house portraits with the proper enchantments to warrant speech. Leaning back against the cold rim of the marble tomb behind him, he stared mutely towards his father's portrait for a long series of moments, his eyes mildly stinging as he watched Lucius' features moving this way and that before returning to the start of their apparent sequence of animation. His lips parted several times as though to speak, but each time he tried, he found himself just as wordless as he had been when his mouth was closed. Despite the crushing feeling that he should say, at the very least, something; there were few words that seemed to fit such a situation, and even less that seemed to make sense given that he was speaking to, what he imagined to be, nothing more than canvas and the various magics that had been impressed upon it.

Within his silent uncertainty, he had once more failed to notice the dark haired boy, who, in Draco's grieving ignorance, had crept quietly from his previous cross-legged position and up to the doorway of the mausoleum, leaning silently against the aging stone for several minutes with his dark eyes trained inquisitively on the head of silken hair that spilled over the fairer boy's shoulders.

"_I imagine I should offer my condolences.."_

Draco frowned at the sudden interruption of the formerly rather welcome silence, turning abruptly towards the sound of the dry voice and narrowing his eyes at the greasy-haired boy who had been seven years his Hogwarts roommate under varying degrees of loathing and vague friendship. The two had never really been 'friends' so to speak over their many years of having to occupy the same space, but they had been civil more often than not - sharing the odd sneaky drink in the common room, or laughing at the expense of others and their misfortune - and even when they had not been, they had both, begrudgingly, more often than not, accepted each other as equals if nothing more within the knowledge that such a conclusion was largely unavoidable; especially given how useful an asset they could both be to the other at various points.

"_Yes, I imagine that would be considered the proper thing to do." _Draco replied, his feet shifting slightly and his frown frozen in place as he quirked a brow. _"So, did you want something other than to share that _ingenious_ little statement with me? Or have you simply taken to stalking the rich and handsome since I was banished from the land of the living? I never knew you cared, Theodore. I'm touched. Truly.."_

The blonde smirked disdainfully, to which the darker haired boy shook his head, his lips twitching into a similar expression and his shoulders briefly shrugging as he spoke, his voice laced with the standard lack of concern that an exchange between the two seemed to demand.

"_Well, given your inspired deduction of my reason for being here; I imagine I'll have to just admit to the stalker option and get it over with, _Master _Malfoy.." _He smirked teasingly._ "Why, as soon as I heard that you were heir to the proverbial throne if you should happen to wake, I could hardly contain such an urge."_

Draco rolled his eyes at the typically mordant drawl of the boy's voice, a faint smirk on his lips for a moment at the sheer familiarity of such an exchange before his head turned back towards the portrait on the wall, feeling strangely compelled to face the image even before noticing that his father seemed to be offering him an indistinct smirk from within the frame, the realization causing Draco's brow to furrow again. Unable to detach himself from such a meticulous gaze, his eyes scanned downward towards the bottom of the frame, tracing over the words 'Lucius Abraxus Malfoy' that were etched on a golden plaque beneath the silent depiction. A leaden quiet fell over the room for several moments as Draco remained staring back and forth from the portrait and the text beneath, leaving Theo to take a step back out of the doorway without Draco even noticing and resting against the wall outside in a seeming want to give the boy a little more space. Out of the blue a few moments later, his voice rang out from outside, sounding almost genuine.

"_In all seriousness though, you do have my sympathies on the matter of your Father.."_

Draco frowned slightly, such a tone to Theo's voice sounding not only alien but rather creepily so as the blonde turned back to face what now appeared to be a disembodied voice, prompting him to follow in the direction of the sound with a rather aggrieved sigh. Finding the boy propped lazily against the wall of the mausoleum outside, Draco raised an eyebrow at him, sounding annoyedly disbelieving as he propped his own body up against the stone entryway, arms folded tightly across his chest.

"_Don't feel like you have to humour me just because we once shared a dorm. It's not as if _any_ Nott ever gave a damn about the Malfoy's; and you and I both know that we're the first of several generations to have not been incessantly at each others throats from the get-go, only now due to the alliance of our Lord.. So forgive my intrigue, or more so utter disbelief, over such a claim being even the tiniest bit plausible.."_

Nott nodded along with Draco's words, a bored air to every motion up until the final sentence, at which he smirked, offering an indifferent shrug.

"_True. I can't say I really hold that much partiality towards the one lost, but I can appreciate the loss regardless of such a fact." _Draco looked on, clearly bewildered by such a comment as Nott chuckled feebly at the other boy's reaction, running a hand back through his dark hair to push it out of his eyes._ "Merlin.. You really never did pay all that much attention to anything aside from yourself in our Hogwarts days, did you?"_

Shaking his head, the boy's harsh brown eyes scanned to one side of him as he gestured towards a small and rather more delicate looking grave site, the aged stone rising from the ground in the form of what appeared to be a granite angel with a realistically pained expression and its wings folded tight against its back. Following the boy's gaze, Draco stared for a moment at the grave, not recognising it in the slightest and soon turning back to Theodore with a shrug at such. The dark haired boy shook his head once more, causing a large section of hair to fall back into his eyes, his expression as stoic as ever as he nodded between Draco and the half-ruined monument across from them.

"_Draco Malfoy, I'd like you to meet my mother. It is truly a pleasure to acquaint the two of you.."_

"_Your Mothe--" _Draco frowned, seeming rather puzzled for a second before the reality of the situation hit him._ "Oh.."_

Draco's shoulders sank a little under the weight of such an unyielding introduction, feeling almost the slightest bit guilty over not having known for a moment before thinking better of it. His face had barely twitched at such a thought, but Nott had noticed the sudden ripple on the previously calm surface regardless, the corners of his mouth curving upwards a slight as he waved a dismissive hand at Draco.

"_I see no reason why you should have known, Prince, so you can wipe that look off your face. Guilt really isn't very becoming on you, no matter how minor it may be."_ He smirked, pulling out a silver cigarette case from his cloak pocket and flipping open the lid, offering them out towards Draco. _"Smoke?"_

Marginally tempted to chuckle at his familiarly jesting title being thrown into the mix, Draco managed to resist the urge to submit to the impulse, instead finding himself sincerely grateful for the easy segue into a less dismal subject than either of their dead parents - even though the offer responsible for such a topic change had made his face screw up instantly in disgust.

"_Eugh.. I'd rather end up gaining my place in there" _He replied curtly, nodding his head back towards the inside of the crypt "without_ the aid of that muggle crap, thanks.. Why you still choose to fill your lungs with smoke from those absurd things, I'll never quite fathom."_

"_Personally, I blame Bulstrode." _Nott shrugged as he lit one of the offending muggle items with the fiery tip of his wand, his words triggering a slight smirk from Draco at the memory of Millicent and Nott's ephemeral but undeniably memorable - not to mention turbulent - relationship during their 6th year, in which the torch of habit had been passed. _"That and the amount of muggles that seem to demand one of these things as a last request" _Nott continued, grinning._ "It would appear that smoking has become the in thing to do when in constant mortal peril, for the muggles anyway.. Ever since the whole incident with their Queen, the entire country's been falling in line with a cloud of smoke behind them and expecting to die regardless of their acceptance. Therefore, it's become a rather amusing accessory for me, as I'm sure you can imagine."_

"_Right." _Draco said with an air of sudden exasperation, quirking a brow._ "Well, as lovely a story as that was, it might have been of a little more benefit to me if I knew what in Merlin's name you'd been going on about for half of it.."_

"_Hmm.. So you're a little further behind than I thought.."_ Nott murmured, as if talking more to himself than anyone else. _"No matter. Let's just say that you've woken up in a very changed world, Malfoy..."_

"_Really? I never would have guessed.."_ Draco said with a roll of his eyes, his sarcasm bordering on fierce annoyance. _"Just when I think you can't possibly be any more tediously unhelpful, you go ahead and astound me. How delightfully typical." _He continued through slightly gritted teeth, managing to provoke a slight laugh from Nott at the boy's obvious frustration.

"_Yes," _ He nodded. _"I can imagine it would be. Although, don't pretend that you're actually shocked."_ He paused to take another long drag from his cigarette, watching the smoke drift up between the two as he exhaled. _"Eight months is hardly a short stretch though, so I'm sure you can understand that I have reasons for constraint when it comes to divulging too much too soon."_

Draco sighed. _"__There always has to be _something_ when it comes to you, doesn__'__t there?__"_

Nott grinned, leaving Draco rolling his eyes at him as he refused to comment any further and instead simply removed the near finished cigarette from his lips, dropping it to the ground and crushing it into the earth with his heel.

"_You're lucky in ways though, I suppose.."_

"_Lucky?"_ Draco's brow knitted together slightly. _"How so? - And I _really _do hope that you're intending to humour me with more than the customary ambiguity when it comes to that particular statement.."_

"_Come on.."_ Nott smirked. _"When have I ever humoured you just because you asked me to?"_

"_A lamentably fair point.."_ Draco said, rolling his eyes. _"You reticent bastard.."_

Nott continued to smirk for a moment before letting a brief laugh escape his lips, his head tilting slightly to one side with an evaluative glance, as though assessing whether or not Draco was worthy to receive such information; leaving Draco to stare impatiently back at him for a moment before Nott finally chuckled again, putting his palms in the air in jesting surrender.

"_Alright, alright.. You're lucky that I can barely resist answering what with your lovely new hair-do and all," _he smirked, coughing into his hand before continuing._ "Let's just say that it's been no picnic getting to the point we're at today. 'Blood, sweat and tears' has been somewhat of an unuttered campaign slogan since Potter kicked it. We lost a good many men - and women - in the initial weeks, enough in fact for the Dark Lord to begin recruiting halfbloods to fight on the front lines of his cause instead of his more worthy supporters. We've all experienced a lot of death since he has risen, Malfoy. You should count yourself among a lucky number who hasn't actually had to witness any of it from start to finish as of yet. Although I'm sure that Zabini has already made that clear."_

"_What?"_ He frowned. _"Why would Blaise have made that clear?"_ His frown didn't shift, instead growing larger by the second as his arms began subconsciously crushing even tighter across his ribcage, his pale fingers leaving tiny red circles on his skin where they dug into his upper arms. _"The constant cryptic is really starting to grate, Nott.."_

"_Wait.. Surely you heard about his mother at the very least.."_ Nott frowned for a moment before rolling his eyes in response to Draco's - clearly clueless - shaking head. _"Honestly Malfoy, have they had you locked up in a quilted soundproof crate since you woke up?"_

Draco didn't reply through his uncertainty; the immediate confusion seeming suddenly as clear set on his face as though it were spelled out in glittering ink, and his dulled eyes urging Nott to go on as his voice tried and failed to make any sound to accent his silent plea. Nott sighed, instantly understanding the blonde's meaning and shaking his head at such as he plucked another cigarette from the tarnished case, lighting it with a fluid swish of his wand.

"_It happened during the first rebellion, a couple of weeks in.." _Nott looked up from his cigarette and towards Draco's still glassy eyes, taking a long drag before continuing. _"She was in charge of one of the muggleborn detention facilities while we were doing the initial assessments. No one really knows what happened entirely, but the basic gist is that somehow a group of the captives managed to get hold of their wands - from what we could glean, they had inside help; although all who were involved on their side died without divulging any names for us to work with.. Anyway, they went on a rampage through the whole place, killing anyone in the dark lord's employ that they could find.. By the time they got to Lucretia, seeing as she'd undoubtedly been the one in charge of the place and with a vicious enough rule to make even your aunt Bella wince, they were beside themselves; sending hexes firing into her quarters from all direction's they could manage, but not a single one aimed to kill her. They were in it for the satisfaction, you see; wanted her to suffer for her sins.. Driven mad by over exposure to beatings, curses and cramped conditions I assume.."_ he shrugged, his brow furrowing. _"It took her days to die though, and Zabini-- Blaise, that is, was the one who found her, or so I heard. He did a right number on the few of them that were left keeping her there, according to the gossip surrounding the whole ordeal.. Moved him right up the ranks, that did.."_

"_Fuck.."_ Draco grimaced, feeling rather lost for words. _"But.. Blaise didn't say a word.."_ He continued to frown mutely, an unexpected weight sinking inside his chest. _'not that I gave him much of a chance to..'_ he thought suddenly, letting out a deeper sigh that he would have cared for at the realization that to deem his own loss as isolated, was more naively foolish than he ever would have thought himself capable.

Nott frowned slightly, quite unused to seeing the former Slytherin sovereign with so little to say for himself, and with such an apt look to accompany his speechlessness. Running a hand awkwardly back through his hair, his feet shuffled almost uncomfortably as he continued to stare at Draco, desperate for anything to say to break the silence that had suddenly become rather suffocating.

"_In hindsight, perhaps I should have thrown a joke in there to lighten the mood.. Although, I can safely say that I know of no jokes that would make anyone laugh, even in far less dire situations.. So perhaps my non-attempt may well have been for the best.."_

Nott's tone sounded rather amusedly discomfited, much in fitting with how he looked at present. Draco, however, hadn't noticed on either count. He had yet to even glance up from the ground since Nott had got to the wrapping up stage of his tale; Draco's lifeless gaze instead fixated on the floor and casually following the progress of a galleon-sized jet black beetle as it crawled in aimless zig-zags across the dirt at the two boys' feet. Continuing to frown towards the earth and not noticing Nott's tongue-tied scrutiny of the situation in the slightest, Draco swiftly chose to turn his impulsive anger on the creature at his feet, drawing his wand idly from his pocket and in a flash of red and a harshly whispered 'Incendio', he watched the twitching creature burst into a rush of flames and high pitched squeals. Not taking his eyes off of the thing until it had become nothing more than a modicum of ash and a few trembling unburned limbs, he turned his blank gaze back towards Nott - who remained stood, both eyebrows raised and looking very unsure of whether to be a tad concerned, or just to laugh - and stared at the boy, taking a moment to rid his voice of his previously felt anger before managing to speak.

"_I should go.."_

"_Yeah.. I can see how that might be in the interest of any rogue wildlife in the vicinity, Prince psycho."_ Nott smirked, shaking his head slightly as the words 'like father, like son' rang quietly round in his head. It was just like a Malfoy to take their own annoyance out on something they viewed as a lesser being rather than the direct cause. Such a thought in mind, Nott quirked a brow. _"You do look an awful lot like him, you know.. Your Father I mean, not the late creepy crawly.."_

"_Yeah, I got that.. "_ Draco smirked slightly and shrugged, not really knowing what else to say to such a comment and offering the boy a tight lipped half-smile, nodding his head towards him a moment later. _"Uh.. Thanks, I guess.."_

"_No thanks necessary,"_ Nott said, waving a hand. _"I just thought it was worth mentioning the continuation of such an annoyingly flaxen legacy" _He grinned slightly, pushing himself off of the stone behind him and giving Draco a reciprocal nod before taking a few steps away from the mausoleum and back into the grounds it sat in. _"Be seeing you, blondie."_

Draco smirked at this, shaking his head before lazily waving a hand towards the boy and copying the motion; his feet leading him towards the entryway with his hands jammed in his pockets, fingers opening and closing absentmindedly around his wand as he walked. He was almost at the gates when Nott's voice sounded out again.

"_Oh, Malfoy? I almost forgot.. Catch.."_

Extracting something small and dark from his pocket, Nott tossed it through the air over the towering stone monuments and towards Draco without any further elaboration. The blonde's eyes followed the object for a fleeting moment before his hand dashed out of his pocket instinctively and snatched it from the air, turning it over and over in his hand and examining it with a slightly confused expression given that it had not immediately done something awful to him, which in retrospect, it easily could have. At first glance it almost looked like a wingless snitch made out of copper, perfectly round and engraved with several vine-like twisting lines of no discernable pattern. Confused by such a foreign object and looking up in the next instant to ask what it was, he frowned at Nott's sudden disappearance from the grounds and even more so as the boys voice rang out softly from somewhere within the graveyard.

"_Bis interimitur qui suis armis perit.."_ Nott called out with a grin to himself, his vantage point granting him easy visual access to the puzzled look spreading across Draco's features. _"It'll all make sense when the time comes. Just keep it close for now."_

Draco's eyes continued to scan the area surrounding him for any sign of the boy to no avail, frowning slightly at the mention of such unfamiliar words - which he could only assume to be Latin - and repeating them several times inside his head, wondering where the vague air of recognition surrounding them stemmed from. _'Bis interimitur qui suis armis perit'_..

Reaching the gates with the graven orb still in hand, he cast one last look around the graveyard for any sign of Nott, finding not even a single glimpse of movement aside from the occasional fluffy white dandelion seed drifting past his vision, and soon turned his back on the growing frustration of the scene, ready to make his way back to more familiar turf.

--

* * *

--

After the succession of information he had received from Nott, Draco's return to the manor seemed rather unexpectedly surreal; even more so than the intolerably measureless snippets of current events that had fed such confusion to begin with. The manor had always been a place of innate comfort to Draco, with its expansive grounds not only having many pleasant settings to offer, but being perfectly accommodating should he want somewhere to hide away for hours at a time if he so chose to - not to mention the hundred or so rooms within it's stone façade of a similar nature. But now, in the knowledge that as he had slept, its entirety had passed to his tenure given that he was the only remaining male heir; now that his Father was gone and he was effectively the lord of the manor, the place seemed oddly foreboding and uncomfortably foreign, as though it was nothing more than the lingering remnant of a dream he had once woken from in a nervous cold sweat. It was like having amnesia, he supposed; like waking up to something you neither knew nor understood, and wondering whether or not the information you had lost in that missing time would ever fully return to you in the true glory that it may well deserve to. Draco's head was misted incomprehensibly with thoughts of the new world alongside his futile attempts to decipher their meaning, not to mention the nagging image of his father's rather sinister portrait above his tomb, the stinging remorse he felt over his lack of knowledge over Blaise and his departed mother, and more prominently than all, the tiny spherical object which he still held appraisingly in one hand, eyeing it every few steps with a near crippling uncertainty.

Still curiously twirling the decidedly useless looking object in one hand as he headed towards the large front doors of the manor, offering a lazy flick of his wand alongside a muttered incantation to unlock the entrance, he wandered inside entirely without direction and let his feet lead him forwards without a thought of a destination in mind. The mere act of pacing was enough; the thud of his footsteps like a metronome, keeping him on the right track regardless of where such a path might lead. Mere moments later, he had pocketed the peculiar copper sphere and found his hand clasping around a door handle in its place, his legs blindly leading him inside and allowing the sound of his footsteps to echo off of the familiar cavernous walls of his father's office as the door softly clicked shut in his wake. Not having a clue why he was there, though not particularly caring to question it as soon as he realized where he was, he headed towards the large mahogany desk on the far side of the room and promptly set about turning the chair to face him; seeing such an act as the final nail in the proverbial coffin given that his father's office was as close to a throne room as one could find in the manor, despite its many other palatial offerings. His fingers clasped onto the supple leather of the chair and he slowly span it to face him, only to rear back a moment later at what such a motion had presented him with.

An almost skeletal looking man sat in the chair; frail yet unmistakably powerful, with wrinkled skin clearly ravaged by the years and battles he had no doubt lived through and his hair hanging in stringy, coal-grey clumps around his partially balding head. The man was no stranger, although going on past experience, Draco had learnt that his appearance in any room didn't generally tend to fall on the side of fortuitous.

"_Mr Nott.."_ Draco said, eyes narrowed and feeling rather assaulted to find that one particular person sat in his father's chair - especially when feeling so freshly bemused from an encounter with the elder man's son. Picking up on such sheltered distaste within an instant, the man offered a wheezy chuckle and motioned to the chair sat on the other side of the desk, his wand in hand and tapping in portentously measured thuds against the side of the desk; the sound seeming like a notably more sinister metronome by far.

"_Please, call me Darius.."_

Draco frowned at Darius' ever raspy tone, following his gaze to the chair on the opposite side of the desk but remaining fixed to the spot, looming over the old man with his arms folded and an openly incensed look on his face.

"_Ok then, Darius.. Now that such futile pleasantries are out of the way; I find myself suddenly very interested in what exactly you think you're doing in my father's chair? - In his office even?"_

Darius, clearly more amused by the boy's gall than he had previously been, laughed again; emitting a callous throaty sound that seemed so subtly mocking that Draco had to will his skin not to crawl at the implication of the sound.

"_Don't you mean _your_ office, boy?"_

"_No."_ Draco said quickly, through gritted teeth. _"I meant exactly what I said. And don't _ever_ call me boy."_

Darius chuckled yet again, slowly raising his hands into the air as if in a motion of defeat, although Draco knew better than to assume such a fact to be as it appeared.

"_Have it your way then; Draco."_ He said with a mocking bow of his head, smiling a partially toothless smile which only seemed to accentuate the condescending impression of the previous motion. _"If you'd really like to know the specifics of what I _think_ I'm doing, then I suppose there is no harm in indulging you. Currently, I'm going over this past month's figures from our muggle revenue department; trying to sort out which leagues of their trade are worth keeping rather than torching, figuratively speaking. That and reviewing a few necessary amendments to the accord. Standard business really."_

"_That's _not_ what I meant, and you know it."_

Darius merely smiled. _"__Well then, perhaps you should think a little more carefully when it comes to the phrasing of your enquiries, Mr Malfoy. Mine seemed a perfectly acceptable reply to your query, in my mind.__"_ The man smirked, leaning back in the chair with his hands rested behind his head, the disrespect of such a leisurely action causing Draco's blood to boil near instantaneously beneath the pallid surface of his skin. _"__As for what I__'__m doing here in a less pedantic sense; Well, someone had to take over from the lord of the manor when it came down to the business end of things, didn__'__t they? Given that you were.. Incapacitated, shall we say.. The position fell upon my shoulders to assume. Although, I can assure you that I take even less enjoyment in being stuck in this room than you have found upon discovering me here.__"_

Draco scowled at the man, highly unimpressed that Darius Nott, of all people, would be allowed to assume his Father's position within an office that Lucius had once seemed more at home in than his own bedroom. Draco had heard many rumours and gossip over the years when it came to the adverse relationship of Darius and his father, most stories seeming to press upon the matter of a never ceasing school-boy-esque rivalry mingled with both families generations-old dislike of one another, as well as the occasional mention of something to do with the two men's mutual affections towards Narcissa - the latter being a point that Draco had vehemently blocked from his mind every time someone had tried to impress the point on him. But knowing that Darius was in his house, in his Father's.. No, in _his_ office.. Was too much to bear when in possession of such a fresh psychological wound in the same vein. His teeth gritted even more tightly together, the enamel creaking under the severity of contact in a motion that threatened to leave Draco rather toothlessly akin to the old man sat in his father's chair.

"_As novel as that idea sounds, I severely doubt that it holds much truth.."_ Draco spat out. _"How dare you assume to know how I feel to see you sat there. Such thinking is beyond you I'd imagine, _Darius_.."_

The old man's eyebrows lifted slowly, a steady, calculated grin spreading across his features as he shifted in his seat, making himself a little more comfortable. Draco, however, only felt more uncomfortable at such a gesture, and was forced to will his feet to stay firmly planted as Darius leant forwards in his chair, his face a harsh and businesslike mask all of a sudden as he directed a merciless glare at the boy stood before him.

"_Such big words for such a_ young _man.."_ He began, shaking his head. _"But I'd mind your tone if I were you, _boy_. Your indecorous attitude towards your elders, - your _superiors _no less - despite being rather entertaining at first, has already started to wear dangerously thin. Bear in mind that given the death of your father, this is, in all technicalities, _your _work sat on his desk; therefore it is _your_ work which I have been managing thus far, and given that I've been in charge of such matters for these last months, it will be considered my duty to pass my knowledge of these particular workings on to you despite how absurdly little the thought elates me."_ His previously harsh features relaxed into a pitiless sneer as he sat back in his chair, suddenly calm again. _"Now, the way I see it, is that you have two choices: You either show me the respect that is expected of you, and make it easy on yourself.. Or you don't."_

Draco fought back a sneer in return, near choking on the newly formed lump in his throat in the process but refusing to swallow it as he steadied himself in preparation to speak with as little venom as possible; such an act near depleting him of his, already waning, equanimity.

"_And.. What if I don't?"_

Darius merely smiled a rather unsettling smile, his wand once again tapping on the side of the desk, although this time with a far more menacing air which seemed equally reflected in the harshness of his inky blue gaze.

"_Trust me, boy. You don't want me to answer that.."_

_-- _

* * *

_-- _

Pansy had been stood outside the door with her ear pressed to the cold wood, ever since she had been alerted by a rather highly strung house elf that Draco had returned to the manor and headed straight for what the creature had dubbed 'his father's room'. Having a rather good knowledge of the Malfoy's in general from her years of chasing after Draco coupled with her last eight months of using the manor as headquarters in the aid of various Death Eater dealings, she knew precisely where the elf had been speaking of within an instant of the words leaving its parched lips. She had not overheard the conversation within the room in its entirety, but had been listening in long enough to be wearing a rather telling frown alongside tightly pursed lips, the look on her face clearly rather worried by how such an exchange was set to end.

"_Eavesdropping is hardly a very fetching trait for a young lady such as yourself.."_

Pansy jumped slightly, her shoulders quivering for a moment as she turned and saw Narcissa's face behind her, wearing a lopsided grin. Sighing and putting a hand to her head, she took a step away from the door and towards the lady of the manor, offering a slight bow of her head.

"_I-- My apologies, Narcissa.."_ she whispered, casting a worried glance back towards the office door before continuing. _"It's just that, as soon as I was informed of Draco's return I felt obliged to see what he was up to given how carelessly I allowed him to slip out this morning.. My curiosity just got the better of me knowing that Dar--"_

"_It's perfectly all right. You need not explain yourself."_ Narcissa cut in effortlessly, stopping Pansy mid sentence. _"Goodness, I doubt I could honestly recall the amount of times I've stood at that door doing the very same thing over the course of these many years.."_ She smiled. _"A fine Malfoy you'll make someday my dear, and given your absence in your own quarters last night, I take it that our strategy in line with such thinking is going.. Well?"_

"_Yes."_ Pansy replied promptly. _"All has gone quite according to plan so far."_

"_Very good then."_ Narcissa swept an arm out, gesturing Pansy away from the door as she began to pace slowly down the large, portrait lined hall. _"Come, we'll have a spot of tea in the parlour while we wait; I'm sure we have a few more things to discuss as it is. I'll send one of the girls to stand watch and alert us when Draco is free of such tediously pressing obligations as Darius.."_

Narcissa smiled kindly towards the girl, placing a slender fingered hand on her shoulder as Pansy returned the smile and allowed herself to be led away from the office and towards the plethora of doors in the adjacent hallway. Casting a casual glance over her shoulder as they turned the corner, she offered an encouraging smile towards the doorway she had previously been near camped outside; or more so towards the boy within such a room, regardless of whether or not he could see such a seemingly pointless token of tacit support.

Draco may have been a stubborn fool, but he was _her_ stubborn fool, after all.

--

* * *

--

**A/N: **I don't have much to say on this one, aside from the fact that the Nott's are SO damn hard to write!! (I blame Annie, personally.. Although only Paula will get that reference no doubt lol)

Either way, I like this chapter quite a bit (it was definitely a great deal of fun to write, despite my having to redo parts of it several times lol) and hopefully you guys will as well - Either way, let me know if you like it/hate it/don't get it.. Whatever..

Thanks to justawritier, pansy, nameless freak and Miss Anthrope for their pleasant feedback, hope you're still with me and have enjoyed this next chapter as well ;) - and I can only apologise for the chapters gaining length as I go on lol.

Remember; feedback is love, so lay it on me :p

(And yes, that also means you lurkers who have this on story alert but haven't commented thus-far!)


End file.
